Dying really screws up your routine
by flashwitch
Summary: Coulson has OCD. He's had it for a very long time, but he had it under control. With routines and some therapy, it hardly even affects him any more. He doesn't even need medication. Then he dies. And his routines are shot straight to hell.
1. Chapter 1

**May trigger: Issues with food, mental health issues.**  
**I know very little about OCD and about the same amount about recovery from being stabbed in the back. Sorry if I screw up too bad, and please let me know if there's something glaringly wrong**.

* * *

Dying, Coulson thinks, really fucks with your routine.

It is 09:00, and he's only just woken up. That's wrong. Supposed to wake up at 05:30 precisely, 06:00 gym or jog, depending on what day of the week it is, shower and breakfast by 07:30. 08:00 report to work. He has a set route for his jog and a set series of exercises, precisely timed, for his gym routine. And now he had to fit in to a new routine. A routine that belonged to someone else.

09:00 wake up, check vitals. Breakfast, but he doesn't eat it because he hasn't seen it get prepared and he's having difficulties at the moment. Normally his issues with food aren't noticeable. But, dying will do that for you. 09:30 he's due at physiotherapy. There's some restriction of movement in his left arm, and Loki's staff had clipped his spine causing a limp. He wants to hack off his malfunctioning limbs, but he'd have to take off the working ones as well so that it would be equal.

11:00 and he has a meeting with a psychiatrist. She throws around words like post traumatic and stress reaction and he counts the tiles on the ceiling. There are 24. That bothers him. He counts again. Still 24.

She leaves at 12:00 but returns 27 minutes later with the orderly who brings his lunch. She saw it prepared, she says. She promises it's safe to eat. He's counted the tiles 3 more times since she left.

He _knows_ it's safe to eat. That isn't the point.

He doesn't eat it.

He's been off medication for 4 years, 5 months and 23 days. He doesn't need to go back on it just because of this. He had it under control, before. He did.

* * *

Nick comes to see him. Tells him he'd better goddamn get better soon because he needs him to play super-nanny to The Avengers. They still don't know he's alive. Nick notices him counting the ceiling tiles.

"Ah shit."

"I said something similar myself, sir."

"I thought you had it under control."

"I did. And then I died. That's the sort of thing that really fucks with my routine, sir."

"And no routine means no control." It's something that Phil had told Nick when it had first started getting bad. When he was counting every mouthful and had to chew fifteen times before he swallowed. When he was counting every grain of rice he cooked. When he chewed a hole in his lower lip when something unexpected happened.

"Yes, sir." Phil needs structure. He needs plans. That's what makes him such a good asset handler. His missions always run to schedule. And he had it under control. First with medication, then with routine and talk therapy. He had been doing so well, really he had. But now that festering sore at the back of his mind has broken open again, and he doesn't know what to do.

Nick brings him dinner. They count the peas together and Nick gets rid of the extras. He tells Phil that he saw them cook the meat, and that he mashed the potatoes (2 of them, cut into 5 equal pieces each) himself. Phil isn't sure he believes that. Fury lies. But he's hungry enough to ignore it. Besides, everything is the right number, the right shape. They aren't touching each other.

He eats.

Nick leaves as soon as he's finished. Phil doesn't blame him, running a super secret government agency takes a lot of work, and Nick hates hospitals.

Phil taps out Morse code on the bars of his hospital bed. He taps out the entire Morse alphabet, then starts again from the top. He does this 3 more times. Then he gives in and taps out Clint's name. He taps it out 15 times.

Then, he finally sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

He dreams about Clint. About how Clint fucked up his routine without even trying. How Clint didn't even know what he was doing. Phil had been angry at Clint constantly for the first 6 months of their acquaintance. He was still on the meds back then, but he appreciate routine. He expected his agents to arrive punctually to meetings. Not enter 12 minutes late through the air vent.

* * *

Month 7, he started to appreciate Clint. The way Clint pushed him, but didn't push him too far. The way Clint always took the risks that Phil just couldn't.

* * *

In the 9th month of their acquaintance, Clint jumps off a building to get the perfect shot. 6 weeks after that, Phil escorted him from the hospital to his apartment and slept the night on the sofa. He didn't set an alarm. He didn't get up for his usual jog. He changed helped Clint to the table and cooked them both pancakes. From scratch.

* * *

18 months, and Phil stepped in front of a bullet that was meant for Clint. He lay in a hospital bed, similar to this one, and he chewed on his lower lip till it bled. He counted the ceiling tiles until Clint came in, safe and whole.

* * *

2 years and he's screaming down his mike.

"This is not in the plan, Barton! This is not the mission!"

"So change the fucking plan, Coulson! She needs our help!"

"She's an assassin!"

"So was I, once upon a time. Technically, I still am!"

"Barton..."

"If you can't put someone else's life, yeah, her life, because they will kill her when she goes back empty handed, above your stupid plans and routines, then you can piss off. What good are you?"

They bring her in.

* * *

4 years, and Natasha is fitting in well. She moulds herself to Phil's routines, but he notices little things, little tells. She isn't like him, but she has some of the same traits. She has to eat exactly the same thing before every mission, and she ties her laces differently then too. Clint oils his bow, when he's using a more basic version, or he checks it out rigorously if it's the more hi-tech version. He has to have exactly 99 arrows, for reasons only known to himself.

That's when Phil goes off the pills. Because he figures that if they can cope, if they are a little bit like him, then maybe he can cope too.

* * *

Clint kisses Phil in the 6th year since they met. Phil kisses him back. They fit together. Phil refuses to give blow jobs, or to rim. He isn't keen on receiving those either, even though Clint is enthusiastic. Phil doesn't like having strange things in his mouth. He has rules about what goes in there, and this is against the rules.

* * *

For their 1st anniversary (year 7) Phil cleans Clint really well, and shaves him, then sucks him off. He researched it on the internet. He's pretty sure it isn't the best blow job ever, but it does the job.

He doesn't let Clint come in his mouth.

* * *

It had been 8 years, 7 months and 13 days since Phil had met Clint. He gets a call. 'Barton's been compromised'. He does his job. He gets the Phase Two Weapons out, but he can't stop himself from counting them one by one as he loads them onto the truck. (He might have left 2 behind in the rubble so the number would come out right in his head). After the initial crisis has past, and he's trying to sort through the damage, he can't seem to stop tapping Clint's name on his leg in Morse code. That's new.

He chews on his lower lip, and then replaces it with the chewing gum he keeps in his pocket for when he's feeling anxious.

* * *

Then he dies. Which fucks up his routine more than Clint ever did.


	3. Chapter 3

It is 6 months before Phil feels stable enough to let them know that he's alive. Even then, he's still not as well as he was. Nick had been trying to get him to tell them he was still alive for 5 of those months. But he couldn't. He just couldn't. He didn't want them (Clint) to see him like this. Broken.

He still has a limp.

Nick insists on taking the heat.

"I started this; I'm going to end it. I'm going to tell them that I kept you in isolation until you were healed."

"You don't have to do that."

"Yeah, I do. They already hate me."

"How are you going to do it?"

"I'll let Stark overhear me discussing your care with another agent. Give him maybe ten minutes to hack in and find you."

"Ah, I wondered about the locks and the guards on my door."

"Yeah."

"And I suppose that's where my window went too?"

"They should be here by the end of the day. You ready?"

"I guess." Phil shrugs and rubs at his chest. Nick looks at him for a long moment and then sighs.

"You're alright. You're coping better. They miss you."Nick pauses, and then sighs again. "_He_ misses you. I don't think he can cope without you much longer."

That gave Phil pause.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

* * *

It is precisely 6 hours later that the door bursts open. Phil has worn an uneven path along the floor with his pacing.

He can't hold back the slight smile when it's Captain America who bursts in through the door first, in full regalia, his shield on his arm. Being rescued by Cap had been a fantasy of his childhood. His collecting of Captain America goods was the first sign that he was compulsive. Iron Man next. He's already ranting when he opens the face plate. His eyes are very wide, and his skin is pale. Natasha next. She reminds him of a porcelain doll, her skin pale apart from two patches of high colour on her cheeks. She smiled, and he expects her cheeks to crack.

He stares at the doorway for a long moment, but no one else follows. He's vaguely aware that Stark is still talking, and that Captain America is approaching him with hands outstretched, the way you approach a wild animal. He looks at Natasha, a question in his eyes.

"He isn't coming."

"Oh." Coulson swallows heavily and sits down on the bed.

"We're getting you out of here," Cap tells him, and puts a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Yes. Of course."

"How are you?" Stark asks, talking too fast, eyes flicking from Coulson's face to his chest. "I mean, Loki stabbed you in the heart. Are you alright? How are you not dead?"

"Later. I'll explain later."

"Yeah, daring escape first, long story later."

Coulson walks out with them, leaning on his cane a little heavier than usual. He doesn't always need it, but this is a bad day.

When they got out to the car (an armoured hummer that Stark had waiting for them, what were they expecting Fury to do?) Coulson leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.

"Why are you using a cane?" Natasha asks, her tone sharp. "You were stabbed in the back."

"Loki's staff nicked my spinal cord. It caused nerve damage to my right leg. Motion in my left arm was restricted too by the scar tissue, but with physiotherapy, that's pretty much gone."

"And your chest?" Steve asks. He knows about breathing troubles, and sounds sympathetic. Coulson smiles.

"It's... okay. I got a pretty bad lung infection early on. Ventilator Assisted Pneumonia. It means I'm more vulnerable to problems in the future. I'm back on an inhaler for the first time since I was a kid, but I don't have to use it much. I have had to have two surgeries on my heart, the second completely replaced a damaged valve."

"And what's the prognosis? Will it continue causing you problems?"

"One of the benefits of working for SHIELD is that I get all the latest treatments. The repair to my heart should hold up in the long term. I have to be a bit more careful, and at the moment, my stamina is stupidly low, but eventually I should be almost as good as new."

"That's good to know. We all missed you."

Phil looks away. He knows Steve is trying to reassure him, but it just makes him feel guilty.

_Stop it, _he tells himself firmly, itching to bite down on his lower lip. _You did what you had to do to get better. _Except that maybe he doesn't believe that anymore. His fingers start tapping against his leg, and he sees Steve shoot him a strange look. That's right, Cap knows Morse. He should stop, he knows he should, but he keeps tapping out patterns and words, helpless.

* * *

They get to Stark Tower and get into the elevator. Coulson counts the floors as they fly by. They get off on what Stark calls the 'living area'. It apparently has a group kitchen, dining room, archery and gun range, gym, artist's studio, library, games room and den. Because that's the sort of thing Tony does. They walk into the den, and Clint is there. Dr Banner and Thor are there too, and they're standing under a banner that says 'welcome home', but Phil doesn't notice that till later. He sees Clint first. Sees how he's lost some weight, how there are bags under his eyes, but he still has the exact same smile. They fall into each other. And Phil relaxes for the first time in over six months. Clint was here. And Clint was familiar. Nothing really mattered as long as they were together.

"Fuck, Phil. Thought we'd lost you."

"Still here."

And maybe, one day soon, Phil will tell him. Put aside the fear and explain. And maybe Clint will understand, because he has demons too.

Or maybe not. Maybe they'll just carry on as they always have, stuck in the same old routine.

* * *

**Let me know what you think!**


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